Monday, September 4, 2017

Author’s Note: I wrote the piece below
just as it stands and collected the photos you see here the week before
Hurricane Harvey began to threaten the Gulf Coast.The forces behind the disasters I describe and
the ones in Texas and Louisiana are the same.Our planet needs more than prayer.It needs us to behave as if we care about it.And about one another!

Unlike the Fall/Winter/Spring/Summer weather pattern that
most of are used to, Equatorial East Africa ordinarily has two seasons: wet and
dry.

People going on safari and keen to see animals are
ordinarily advised to go in a dry season.This is when thirsty animals are guaranteed to visit water holes.Most camps provide a water source so animals will
come and put on show for their guests.In
this situation, the dry periods are considered optimum.

Back during the time I write about in my historical
mysteries, attitudes were different.Almost
all the early European memoirists of British East Africa expressed longing for
the rains.Most of them were farmers,
and farmers have always fussed over rainfall.Those early Twentieth Century newcomers adopted the attitudes of their
tribal neighbors—early and plentiful rains were a joyous event.In Out
of Africa, Isak Dinesen expresses a continual worry over failing rains,
which would lead to failing crops, which would mean bankruptcy, forcing her to return
to Denmark.She characterizes the rains as
a potential perpetrator of a fearsome crime. A misery that eventually befell her.

My settler characters have a similar relationship with the
weather.

In East Africa, from Somalia far down into South Africa, the
vagaries of the rains were then and still are potentially life threatening.

The climate of the area is alternately dry and wet.Two rainy periods are expected (actually,
hoped and prayed for) every year: the Long Rains and the Short Rains.The first ordinarily begin in March or April
and end in May or June.This is followed
by a dusty period until October, when the short rains are supposed to begin and
last into November, perhaps December.

A major factor in Mother Nature’s properly delivering the
vital water is the temperature of the Indian Ocean, which—no surprise—has been
rising.This makes the rains even more
unpredictable.The warmer ocean is what
climatologists call “anthropogenic”—caused by the activities of human
beings.It is a direct result of
greenhouse gasses collecting in our sacred planet’s atmosphere.We used to call it “global warming,” but that
is too simple a moniker.What’s really
happening is that climate change ramps up the extremes: wet areas get wetter
and dry ones get drier, bringing floods and droughts.These phenomena are more pronounced in East
Africa with its ordinarily alternating dry and wet seasons.Sudden heavy rains on parched earth mean
flash floods, when bridges and animals and people are carried away.Drought conditions mean no food—not for the
people and not for the animals.Flooded
fields mean rotted crops.

Tragedy has struck in these past few years.Millions of people in the area are threatened
with starvation.They are not the people
who have created the current situation.But they the ones paying the price.

I end with a hymn—a prayer, for beautiful rain—in just the right
amount—for the suffering animals and people of Africa.

Stan, I remember last February, when you were counting down the number of days left in Cape Town's water supply. And the reports on the news of flooding in places and severe drought in others further north. On my worst days, I think it is too late to fix it. That Armageddon is inevitable. I have long thought that human beings have become an infection on this planet, multiplying out of control, eating up parts of it and spewing out poison to its natural environment. And that these disastrous events are the planet's way of fighting back. And as in all such battles, the innocent die first.